


Lyrium

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Alie Hawke [10]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: On the run after what happened in Kirkwall, Hawke finds herself cornered and helpless, magic stripped by Templars on the chase. She grows so weak that only one thing can save her, something she'd sworn never to take so that she would never be like Danarius. But she has no lyrium to replenish her strength...





	Lyrium

Hawke just wanted to go home. She was tired of running, of hiding, of missing her friends and the family she’d found. She was tired of shady inns where she had to disinfect the mattress before touching it and she was tired of being tired because she was too frightened of discovery to sleep.

Somehow she hadn’t realized just how easy she’d had it as an apostate in Kirkwall. Despite all the tension regarding mages, it had been extraordinarily easy to pass herself off as a non-mage. Static crackled in the air so her mana went unnoticed. She fought with a bow and no one seemed to realize that each arrow was a little too deadly. Paving stones moved out of her way and tripped up her enemies and no one seemed to think anything except that she was just that graceful, even once they got to know her and realized how very ungraceful she really was. And maybe her friends had helped. Maybe Varric had bribed people to look the other way, maybe Isabela and Fenris had threatened those who might have reported her, maybe Aveline told all her guards to look the other way. Maybe she’d had more help than she’d known, and she wasn’t that good at hiding.

Whatever the reason, it was all gone now.

She panted hard as she ran further, bow in hand but arms shaking too hard to use it. The Smite blurred her vision, made it hard to think, and she’d gotten lost somewhere in the warehouse district of yet another nameless town somewhere she hardly cared to pay attention to. She could still hear the Templars behind her, but she couldn’t tell over the pounding of her heart in her ears how close they were. She didn’t have any lyrium on her, refused to risk carrying it since it had outed her as a mage shortly after they fled Kirkwall, and without it she couldn’t recover from the Smite fast enough. She was going to get caught, and if it was discovered who she was then she wouldn’t make it as far as the nearest Circle if that was even what the Templars had in mind.

“Fenris,” she gasped, but he was on the other side of town in their room at another seedy inn. She’d left him to sleep because he’d been getting over a cold, had gone out for groceries and some wine to cheer him up. She didn’t even know she’d been made until the Smite washed over her and she’d dropped her bags. The crowded market had saved her from instant capture, but she’d turned the wrong way and she wasn’t heading for the inn anymore, for Fenris. She was going to die and he’d probably never find her body.

She collapsed at last against a building that stank of piss and garbage, but she didn’t have the energy left to care. She was shaking so hard from having her mana stripped from her that she vomited, adding to the mess. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t hit her with more than one Smite. The first was bad enough, stealing the strength from her muscles, but the second had made her feel like her eyeballs were melting, and she wasn’t sure if there’d been a third or not but she was pretty sure most of her bones had turned to dust and she was just a sack of floppy meat.

She gasped for breath, her stomach empty, her throat burning from bile, and managed to lean her head against the wall at an angle that allowed her to see the Templars approaching. They were jeering, cheering, pleased with their victory. She couldn’t make out what they said, but their tones were nasty and one kicked her in the stomach with his steel boot, making her heave again.

She was sobbing as he pulled her up by her hair, in agony and certain that she was going to die, and he sneered at her. He pulled his fist back and she gazed at it somewhat dully, but it never made contact. She saw the flash from the edges of her vision and thought it was just the Smite affecting her sight, but then the Templar looked down in horror at his chest and she summoned the will to follow his gaze to find his still-beating heart nestled in a palm that was not his own. Then he fell and dropped her and she didn’t have the strength to look up again. Screams were dim in her ears and bright flashes lit the dim evening, but she couldn’t even summon the will to wonder what was happening.

There was silence after a while and she would have wondered if she was dead except that she could still hear the pounding of her own heart against her eardrums. A few moments later she felt a gentle hand lifting her head, supporting her body, and she groaned at it in fear.

“Alie,” a familiar voice whispered, calling her back to herself. “Alie, it’s me. Can you hear me? Oh, what did they do to you?”

“Fenris?” she murmured weakly, trying to make her eyes focus enough to see his face. He swam in and out of her view and she released a weak sob that it was him. “Fen… Smite. Two, m’be three.” She heard his sharp inhale. “Can’t… Weak…” Speaking was taking too much effort, so she stopped trying in favor of just enjoying the feel of his skin and his strong arms around her.

“Alie, stay with me!” his voice was panicked, but so far away. “I don’t have any lyrium potions but you… Alie, no, look at me, please! I don’t… I can’t… There must be something!” She was jostled around as he searched for an answer, but she just wanted him to hold her while the world grew dimmer. “Alie.” His voice was commanding, impossible to ignore, and she forced her eyes open again. “Alie, draw on the lyrium in my skin.”

She scowled and attempted to recoil from him, but he held her easily. “Noooo,” she moaned. “Pr’mised. Would n’v’r…” Her tongue wouldn’t obey her, felt too big in her mouth, but she needed him to understand. He’d been used too much in his life and she’d promised that she would never do something like that to him.

“I know, Alie,” he soothed, and his hand was warm on her face. “But you must. You… you’re going to die if you don’t get lyrium, and it’s all we have. It’s okay, Alie. Please, take it. Because I- I would relive every moment that I belonged to Danarius if it meant I could save you right now. Take it!” He shook her just enough to force understanding into her mind. She felt for his lyrium, for the song that it sang to her blood, but she whimpered as she began to draw on it, hating that she was forced to this.

She’d drawn on his lyrium once before, in a panic as a mage from Tevinter had captured her. He hadn’t held her long, turned to ash by a spell boosted by Fenris’s lyrium. And she’d hated that her fear had driven her to do something like that without thinking, and had never done it since, had wondered if it had been part of why he’d left her alone in bed in the morning, though she’d never dared to ask.

Her strength began to return and she could breathe more easily, and once she was capable to holding her eyelids up she stopped drawing from him. But he tilted her chin up with a finger with get her to look at him and said, “Take more, Alie.” She whimpered at him, and he wiped away a tear that fell. “It is not a betrayal if I ask it of you.”

“That’s not always true,” she managed to whisper. He leaned down to kiss her brow.

“Then it’s not a betrayal because I’d rather endure a whipping than see you brought so low,” he told her, his voice made deeper by his own pain.

She clenched her teeth and drew more power from his skin until her shaking eased and she thought maybe she could stand with a little help. She reached up to touch his face, to push some hair from his eyes, and his relieved smile was like a knife in her gut. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, and he held her tighter, tucked her head under his chin as he all but squeezed the life out of her again. He was shaking hard, but she didn’t know how to apologize properly. So she just tucked her face into the crook of his neck and breathed in the clean, salty scent of him.

When at last he released her, he leaned his forehead against hers. “I almost lost you, Alie,” he whispered. “That hurts far more than giving you my lyrium. These Templars, they weren’t going to take you to a Circle. If I hadn’t found you when I had…”

“How did you find me?” she asked, confused.

“I got up shortly after you left,” he told her. “I was feeling better and I wanted something to drink. But there was something off about the atmosphere, the way people wouldn’t quite look me in the eye. And the innkeeper looked guilty when she saw me, and I knew that something was wrong. They had figured out who you are, and they gave you up to the Templars. So I went to find you. I was almost too late…”

“But you found me,” she whispered. “You saved me. Again.”

He kissed her then, his trembling lips soft and sweet. “I’d say ‘anytime’ but if you make me save you too many times I might get cross.” Her laugh was watery and his smile was relieved as he helped her up. He’d brought their bags with him, so there was nothing more to do but leave yet another town behind.


End file.
